I wouldn't mind FFXIV becoming a WoW clone in the casual/hardcore appeal if...

[Yrusama]

TL;DR: Some people have more free time than others, and want to feel special because of it.

IT'S CRAP LIKE THIS THAT IS KILLING GAMING!

Edit:
Since nobody is picking up on it, I'm being sarcastic here.

And then there are the rare people like me: between jobs, lots of free time, but deliberately taking it slow to preserve the game's longevity. I'm not going at a snail's pace by my standards, but I'm definitely varying things up. My only fear is that my crafts will be all leveled and they might not add anymore.

[Jeronlmo]

My ilvl was far above shout normal DS runs, and your a complete fkn idiot saying that i should have blown threw it in my first run threw and using that as your actual arguement, and how dare I use the CURRENT wow endgame as an example of how easy wow endgame is, shame on me, nonono lets go back to talking about all the old raids you all thought was so hard that yoshi's team isnt playing, obv makes sense. Nearly completing the entire endgame wow has to offer in 2 1/2 months really isnt fast enough for you to show its easy? I never had wow experience in any way/shape/form, and spent most of my time questing and later on waiting for raid timer resets.

[TimonLoon]

My ilvl was far above shout normal DS runs, and your a complete fkn idiot saying that i should have blown threw it in my first run threw and using that as your actual arguement, and how dare I use the CURRENT wow endgame as an example of how easy wow endgame is, shame on me, nonono lets go back to talking about all the old raids you all thought was so hard that yoshi's team isnt playing, obv makes sense. Nearly completing the entire endgame wow has to offer in 2 1/2 months really isnt fast enough for you to show its easy? I never had wow experience in any way/shape/form, and spent most of my time questing and later on waiting for raid timer resets.

As opposed to completing new endgame day of release in this game?

umadbro?

[SniperRifle]

Really hope for progression content where you can't just tackle the hardest bosses right out the gate, but have to clear a series of other difficult dungeons/quests in order to unlock it.

TK/SSC > unlocks Hyjal > clear Hyjal > unlock Black Temple >> Essentially need 4 pieces of T6 on 20/25 raid members to even stand a chance against the first boss in Sunwell Plateau.

All the while; Karazhan still had some decent trinkets that could hold next-to BiS even a year later.

This was fun because you could still maintain a productive life while having a serious gaming experience.

With FFXI my irl would fall apart because camping NMs, whether it be Jailer pop items or Sky pop items, there was a lot of time sinking going around (don't get me wrong, I LOVED killing these NMs just as much as killing the actual Jailers/Gods). I never got into a serious Salvage LS so I can't really express my thoughts on it, I just hear rumors of ridiculously vomit-worthy drop rates.

Either way, to anyone who has never played WoW, the endgame can be very fun I guess so long as you're doing it with your friends. It was equally satisfying for myself when I completed CoP as well as when I cleared Sunwell Plateau. Two games, same great feeling. If SE puts effort into their end game (Crystal Tower/Laby) hopefully something revolutionary can come from it. Something long lasting, that scales well over time, with fair drop rates. For once, it would be cool to have several bosses the world is trying to tackle at once, not just 1 final boss/primal per patch.

For any recognition, the relic questline was a great step in the right direction(the parts you could repeat anyways).

/standardswaytoohigh

EDIT: 4 pieces of T6 is like saying 20 out of 25 raid members would need 4 pieces of Darklight gear in order to even stand a chance against the 1st boss of a 6 boss raid (some raids had a lot more then 6). Only, T6 gear doesn't have a notorious drop rate like Darklight does.

[Jeronlmo]

Why do you keep jumping back to 14? We are not talking about 14, you randomly change between talking crap about 11 and 14 w/e the situation fits, we dont want wow, because i nearly beat the game in a few months, 11 took years, if I didnt basically start the game when DS came out and have to lvl my chars/proffesions, it would have been beat. FF14 is nothing, it has no endgame, there are no content lockouts.

Lasting content vs replacing w/e you did every few months, you see someone able to start the game at any update and being better than you as a good thing, I do not, what you do shouldnt be wiped clear months in the future, you might aswell play a fps so nothing saves.

[Laraul]

Drop the endgame debate. FFXI and WoW both have some very difficult endgame. What separates the two is prior to endgame. FFXI is far less forgiving at getting to endgame then WoW is. It forces players to group to level, soloing isn't viable (with the exception of one class out of twenty). Death is far more dire prior to endgame in FFXI than WoW. You not only loose time, but a exp and possibly a level too. And deleveling renders any gear at your prior level unusable. The reason why FFXI only has half a million subscribers to WoW twelve million is in part because it was so brutal to new players.

[Onisake]

I support challenging content.

But really what is needed are options. right now we know that they are working on solo content, or at least thinking about it. there was a thread from the devs about rare drops from solo content. things like this could help cater to casuals. of course i think this gear should not be quite as good as the best gear in the game (IE: relic should not be obtainable solo)

If content is challenging enough that it requires 5+ tries, i think that is challenging enough. the hardcore players will breeze through most content. and that is to be expected. but we don't want to completely rule out the semi-hardcore players either. i think current content difficultly is on par with where it needs to be. it's not excruciatingly difficult, but it's hard enough that you can't just pug it and win it first try. you can PUG Ifrit and Moogle easily enough, but it's very difficult to pug garuda. this ratio is pretty good imo. you can also pug all story line quests, some groups will win fairly easily and others will struggle. this is a good balance. The later story line quests are more difficult (Rivenroad easy) and are a good gateway to 'end game' content. being able to beat this shows you have some degree of what it takes to succeed in end game (combination of gear, proficiency, reading the field, etc.)

[XxOstiaxX]

Drop the endgame debate. FFXI and WoW both have some very difficult endgame. What separates the two is prior to endgame. FFXI is far less forgiving at getting to endgame then WoW is. It forces players to group to level, soloing isn't viable (with the exception of one class out of twenty). Death is far more dire prior to endgame in FFXI than WoW. You not only loose time, but a exp and possibly a level too. And deleveling renders any gear at your prior level unusable. The reason why FFXI only has half a million subscribers to WoW twelve million is in part because it was so brutal to new players.

It was the lack of options, and the heavy focus on naked grinding......

[Kiote]

It was the lack of options, and the heavy focus on naked grinding......

Actually, it was the willingness of the Development team to not sacrifice Solid Gameplay Mechanics and Lasting Content for the sake of Catering to casual players.

FFXI fans actually enjoyed doing HNMs a hundred times and Running Up 100 Floors of Nyzul Island because when you finally got it done, it felt like you did something. You didn't just win and forget it until the next raid in three months where you replaced all the Top Tier gear you worked so hard to obtain.

FFXI was the last of the Unforgiving Hardcore MMOs. Most people didn't give up on it until they gave in to the Casual Playerbase which they never actually needed.

[Churchill]

The only endgame content XI ever had was Salvage and even that wasn't hard, but it was a fun time-attack raid.

DL: Easy, fuck you moves

Kirin/Sky: Easy, burnable @75 - had somewhat preventable fuck you moves outside of AF

JoL/Sea: Easy

Ground Kings: The only one of things I couldn't fall asleep for was Nidhogg. The potential for the mob to choose to do Hurricane Wing 8x in a row for 1/3-2/5 of every players HP could make it more interesting than normal.

CoP/ToAU Kings: Easy, Tiamat being the only one I never tanked on MNK or SAM but completely possible to do so. NIN/DRK and RDM were good tanks for it though (read: easy).

Limbus: lol

Salvage/Nyzul Isle: easy

Einherjar: Crowd control crazyness, unknown and unscaled randomized difficulty when entering each chamber, random mob to reduce 1/3 random stats, etc. Just a lot of things that could make your run go wrong, not to mention crowd control in a game where your only reliable sleep was resisted by half the chambers at the time. All in all though, Odin's Chamber was pretty good fun at 75cap.

Zeni NM: Terrible, but easy. Most of these were being solo'd at the time.

VNM: Terrible, but easy.

WoTG Kings: Interesting pop conditions, but easy.

Beastmen king BCNMs: these were actually a bit of a challenge, unlike their KSNM cousins



All of these were steamrolled (by people posting in this thread) within days of spawn mechanics, etc, being figured out. The only that that artificially lengthened a "world first" type kill on any of these is a lot of them having unknown spawn mechanics/pop items that we had to figure out just to enjoy because SE was too lazy to release a continued stream of content. Instead, we got mystery box spawn systems and RNG drops.